


The Kiss of Summer

by BlueKiwi



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Brothers of the Southern Isles, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:12:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1285663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueKiwi/pseuds/BlueKiwi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the disastrous events in Arendelle, an older brother talks to Hans and reveals what he's known all along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kiss of Summer

When I first saw you that day, years ago, I thought, “This is an impossible child.”

I remember slipping past the guards--I was reaching the point where I soon would be under the same scrutiny as Gustav and Elias and Isak--and peering past the commotion into the nursery, trying to remain invisible. There were so many talking, so many wondrous murmurs about this strange run of luck. The snide whispers would come later, I hate to say, but at the time you were a glorious reminder of the past. I had to see it for myself--I was much more daring back then. 

Not twins--not like Felix and Fredrik (it would’ve been funny, I think, if we had multiple twins in the family but we were fortunate to only receive those two). Not blonde like Father and Tyge and Bjørn and little Oskar. And certainly not a girl, for the shouts of surprise would’ve been of an entirely different nature. But you were _something_ , I think. You were the only one of us with Mother’s flame red hair--the kiss of summer, the midwives chortled amongst themselves. It was strange, at the time, to think of it.

I remember peering past all of them, seeing the chubby little red face swaddled beneath our colors of gray and blue, a loose red curl escaping from beneath the cloth. I remember Mother, drawn and exhausted but beautiful, looking down at you with exasperated amusement-- _another boy_ , I recall her tell Father with a smile and a shake of her head. 

_A beautiful boy. He looks more like you than all the others._

Personally I thought you were a strange-looking runt--tiny even for a baby--but Mother was so entranced by your hair that she kept stroking that one little curl on your forehead. Father had been right.

The kiss of summer.

Oh, how that term became a _bane_ in our household.

In a way, you never proved me wrong, did you? I wasn’t old enough to appreciate it at the time--none of us were and thinking back on it now, that is the most heartbreaking thing of all? You were a glorious anomaly but there was an inevitability about you that you could never quite shake. You were--what did someone say once?--redundant. A spare. How that ever got back to you, I’ll never know. It was teasing, that stupid teasing we as children often indulge in and look back on in guilt and embarrassment.

I’m sorry.

You were a quiet child--you could be nothing but. The rest of us had come to know our places. Gustav, next in line for the throne, and Elias and Isak were the solid older brothers, guardians in everything and impossibly stern for someone as young as you were. Dan and Lukas had long since known that their sense of flair and drama would have to counterbalance their older brothers’ countenance, and they were only slightly overshadowed in comparison with Fredrik and Felix’s antics. Those four by themselves could light up a whole room by sheer force alone. Tyge was the artist, Bjørn the young diplomat-in-training, Nikolaj the bossy one who would collect favors and sweets and could never be compelled into any sort of athletic ability unless there was promise of cake. Oskar, perhaps, would’ve had your role...but he was the golden child, the blond angel who would do no wrong in the eyes of everyone.

Me? Oh, I was the scholar. Bookish Alexander, always in the library with his nose in some dusty tome. You’d think that would’ve made me observant, but...no. I was foolish enough to think that nothing could outsmart me and then you came along. In that way, yes. Yes, you did prove me wrong.

I hate that you did. I wish that you hadn’t.

So you… _you_ were the superfluous one. The footnote. The one often forgotten. I think that everyone always assumed that cherubic Oskar was the youngest and you became an addition after a pause for breath. A faint reminder that, oh yes there are thirteen of us running around.

And you were overlooked. It happened so often that it simply became tradition for us. A running joke. We were dumb and naive, as children often are. And perhaps that is why...I’m sorry but it is too late for apologies, isn’t it? With thirteen of us, we should have realized that you’d only see a pyramid of favors and boons. Even Oskar and Nikolaj benefited from their status as the...well, as the remembered babies of the family.

But you--yes, _you_ , of all of us--had the kiss of summer. None of us ever knew it was you though. We should have though. After Mother died (and you were too young to remember that--those weeks in black and the silence that filled the halls...I’m glad that you don’t), the inescapable chain of mortality blinded us. We passed off the incidents as signs of the warmer climate, odd little hiccups of heat that burned and scalded and sometimes destroyed.

We should have known. _I_ should have known. I’m the scholar, aren’t I? The one with his nose always buried in a book. It shouldn’t have become an obscenity, that phrase. I should have seen the look in your eyes every time, after one of the incidents, that the servants would curse “the kiss of summer”. The look of guilt and shame...and how, eventually, it washed away. How after so many times of Isak telling you that you couldn’t do this or that, something akin to hunger ate away at the fear. How the adoration that fell upon Oskar spurned jealousy from the quiet confusion in your eyes. How Felix and Fredrik’s pranks went from causing you to flush in embarrassment to stew in cold rage.

After years without the kiss of summer, it started again.

I figured it out though, even though you pretended to not know what I was talking about. You became so good at being a mirror of all of us that you-- _you_ \--disappeared behind layers and layers of masks. You were everything that a prince should be because you desperately, so desperately, wanted the attention that had eluded you for all of those years. And I’m sorry that we--that _I_ \--helped contribute to it. 

I told you that, do you remember? Do you remember that day? We had received notice of the young queen’s coronation ceremony in Arendelle. It seems so long ago, but it was only a few months. I was in the library, the only one of us who used it most often, even more than Elias. And when you came in, I didn’t look up from the letter I was writing to even look you in the eye. 

I should’ve looked up sooner. We all should have looked up sooner.

You let me know that you would go in behalf of the Summer Isles. A fanciful idea that would have been brushed off but we were all so busy and the kingdom of Arendelle, though a prosperous kingdom, was one cloaked in mystery and silence. A show of good faith, if we went. But I failed to see how it could’ve been of interest to you and said so aloud with a smile. Because I thought I knew what you wanted. 

I was wrong.

“You don’t know me,” you said and the way you said it...and I finally looked up. 

Oh, Hans. 

I should’ve looked up years ago. 

You’d grown up while none of us were looking, hadn’t you? You’d let the kiss of summer burn away at your heart and the person standing in front of me now was completely unrecognizable. You weren’t the little boy I remembered, trailing after his older brothers in a desperate search for attention. What had become of you while we had been distracted by politics and sports and courtships? The man standing in front of me was ramrod straight with anger and frustration in his eyes.

I saw my mistake then, my years of mistakes. _Our_ years of mistakes. But it was inevitable, I think. We cursed you by forgetting about you, labelling your one unknown strength as something to be feared, to be hidden. We didn’t know--we couldn’t have known. You’ve always been so good at hiding what you feel that we never could have known--not the source of the fires, not the true meaning of the kiss of summer.

Hans? Hans, look at me. The others are going to come soon. Gustav is furious. But he doesn’t know. Hans, give me your gloves. You _have_ to tell them. Please prove me wrong. For once, prove all of us wrong and be better than what we believed you to be. 

And forgive me, Hans. Forgive me for not seeing _you_. Despite what you may think, there was always someone out there who loved you. You will always be the impossible child to me, the one with the kiss of summer, the one can wield the flames of summer in his hand.

Forgive me for not seeing the fire.


End file.
